Here are 100 books that The Creative Spark fans have personally recommended if you like
The Creative Spark.
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I have studied creativity for 40 years and, along with the textbook I wrote, I am continually teaching my marketing students how to become more creative. I have unequivocally demonstrated that everyone who wants to become more creative can do so with the appropriate tutelage. This is why I get so much satisfaction from teaching creativity and it is why I wrote my book that I am highlighting here.
This book fascinated me because it looks at creative accomplishments through the eyes and behaviors of many of the truly creative people who have graced our planet. The book discusses what made Albert Einstein so creative and how Sigmund Freud became the father of modern psychology. I came to realize that artists like Pablo Picasso, dancers like Martha Graham, and musicians like Igor Stravinsky broke the molds as they ventured forth into novel domains and areas where others had not yet dared to tread. I also learned that personalities are very relevant to many of these creative accomplishments and that many of these personalities do not fit kindly into what societies expect. It’s not that we should attempt to emulate these personalities but that we should feel comfortable leading with our most creative thoughts and actions.
Since it was first published in 1993, Creating Minds has served as a peerless guide to the creative self. Now available as a paperback reissue with a new introduction by the author, the book uses portraits of seven extraordinary individuals to reveal the patterns that drive the creative process,and to demonstrate how circumstance also plays an indispensable role in creative success.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I have worked in scientific research and teaching for over 30 years, and maintained a love of art and music as well, but am saddened when I hear statements, especially from high-school pupils, that ‘there is no room for creativity or imagination in science.’ Like all working scientists, I know that imagination is the most important faculty for a scientist. The Poetry and Music of Science is my project to tease out the creative threads in the scientific process, and also to find the buried pathways that link science with the arts and humanities. The journey of discovery has been full of surprises and delights for me.
Siân Ede gets right behind the commonplace clichés of the art/science divide, from the over-negative polarisation of ‘The Two Cultures’ to the naïveté of ‘sci-art.’ Featuring the work of both artists on their own terms, and a collection of art-science collaborations, she celebrates the differences and pushes against false ‘syntheses’ of art and science. The problematic nature of ‘beauty’ appears in the striking examples she chooses, and creativity threads its way in the background throughout the book.
Is science the new art? Scientists weave incredible stories, invent wild hypotheses and ask difficult questions about the meaning of life. They have insights into the workings of our bodies and minds which challenge the myths we make about our identities and selves. They create visual images, models and scenarios that are gruesome, baffling or beguiling. They say and do things that are ethically and politically shocking. Contemporary scientists frequently talk about 'beauty' and 'elegance'; artists hardly ever do. While demonstrating how science is affecting the creation and interpretation of contemporary art, this book proposes that artistic insights are as…
I have worked in scientific research and teaching for over 30 years, and maintained a love of art and music as well, but am saddened when I hear statements, especially from high-school pupils, that ‘there is no room for creativity or imagination in science.’ Like all working scientists, I know that imagination is the most important faculty for a scientist. The Poetry and Music of Science is my project to tease out the creative threads in the scientific process, and also to find the buried pathways that link science with the arts and humanities. The journey of discovery has been full of surprises and delights for me.
David Bohm is celebrated for creating a completely different theory of quantum mechanics, equally adept and accounting for experiments but conceptually irreconcilable from those of Schrödinger and Heisenberg. Put that together with his broad and deep understanding of culture, and you have a uniquely sensitive and original take on creativity. I particularly like his sharp critique of superficial ‘creativity’ which he claims is mostly reflex. Bohm helps his readers to see that ‘discovery’ and ‘creation’ cannot easily be disentangled.
Creativity is fundamental to human experience. In On Creativity David Bohm, the world-renowned scientist, investigates the phenomenon from all sides: not only the creativity of invention and of imagination but also that of perception and of discovery. This is a remarkable and life-affirming book by one of the most far-sighted thinkers of modern times.
Sine, a professor of creative writing, accompanies Sam, a neuroscientist, on a conference trip to a Hotel Castle. Sam wants to present a new device, the "monitor." Sine hopes to recover from tending to her mother who just passed away.
When they arrive, Sine is in a dream-like state. Real…
I have worked in scientific research and teaching for over 30 years, and maintained a love of art and music as well, but am saddened when I hear statements, especially from high-school pupils, that ‘there is no room for creativity or imagination in science.’ Like all working scientists, I know that imagination is the most important faculty for a scientist. The Poetry and Music of Science is my project to tease out the creative threads in the scientific process, and also to find the buried pathways that link science with the arts and humanities. The journey of discovery has been full of surprises and delights for me.
Visual representations are not the only pathway to creative acts in art and science, but they are responsible for large territories of creativity – including, and surprisingly, the mathematical. Arthur Miller shows how ‘seeing the unseen’ becomes possible from atoms to the conservation of energy in science, and from modernism to cubism in art. The book itself is as visually striking as its contents and helped me to think through why the visual metaphor – ‘Oh, I see!’ – becomes the standard description of the moment of insight.
Here, distinguished science historian Arthur I. Miller delves into the connections between modern art and modern physics. He takes us on a wide-ranging study to demonstrate that scientists and artists have a common aim: a visual interpretation of both the visible and invisible aspects of nature. Along the way, we encounter the philosophy of mind and language, cognitive science and neurophysiology in our search for the origins and meaning of visual imagery. At a time when the media are overeager to portray science as a godless, dehumanising exercise undermining the very fabric of society, this sixth book by Professor Miller…
I'm passionate about what happens at the seam where creativity meets intelligent machines. My work moves between art, design, and AI, and these books sit on that exact edge. The questions they raise, about consciousness, imagination, alignment, and the honest reckoning with what we build, aren't abstract to me. They're the terrain I work in every day, in the studio and in the workshops I teach.
I think this is one of the most honest books I’ve read on AI.
Russell doesn’t perform gratuitous alarm or sell optimism, he reasons. In my own research and in the workshops I teach on creativity and AI, I’ve spent years around people building systems whose objectives I quietly questioned, and Russell gave me the vocabulary I’d been missing.
I love that he treats control not as a constraint on intelligence but as its precondition and preoccupation. It’s the rare AI book I trust.
A leading artificial intelligence researcher lays out a new approach to AI that will enable us to coexist successfully with increasingly intelligent machines
In the popular imagination, superhuman artificial intelligence is an approaching tidal wave that threatens not just jobs and human relationships, but civilization itself. Conflict between humans and machines is seen as inevitable and its outcome all too predictable.
In this groundbreaking book, distinguished AI researcher Stuart Russell argues that this scenario can be avoided, but only if we rethink AI from the ground up. Russell begins by exploring the idea of intelligence in humans and in machines.…
I'm passionate about what happens at the seam where creativity meets intelligent machines. My work moves between art, design, and AI, and these books sit on that exact edge. The questions they raise, about consciousness, imagination, alignment, and the honest reckoning with what we build, aren't abstract to me. They're the terrain I work in every day, in the studio and in the workshops I teach.
I love how Christian writes about machine learning the way I think about painting, as a long conversation between intention and accident.
He moves between research labs and moral philosophy with the lightness of a grounded intellectual. I came for the technical clarity and stayed for the humanity in it.
Today's "machine-learning" systems, trained by data, are so effective that we've invited them to see and hear for us-and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem.
Systems cull resumes until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole-and appear to assess Black…
In an age of splendor, a heretic king strips Egypt bare—forcing his queen to quell rebellion and plunging his children into a conspiracy against the crown.
Salvation in the Sun follows Nefertiti as she ascends the throne beside Pharaoh Amenhotep—soon to become Akhenaten—just as he declares war on Egypt’s ancient…
I'm passionate about what happens at the seam where creativity meets intelligent machines. My work moves between art, design, and AI, and these books sit on that exact edge. The questions they raise, about consciousness, imagination, alignment, and the honest reckoning with what we build, aren't abstract to me. They're the terrain I work in every day, in the studio and in the workshops I teach.
I often return to this book whenever I lose my sense of perception.
Pollan does what only few can do, turning the strangest territory of human experience into something I can almost touch. As somebody who works with creativity and researches intelligence, I find his approach to consciousness disarming. He writes about the mind the way I wish more did, with humility intact.
'Big, generous, illuminating and beautifully written' John Banville, Financial Times
From the best-selling author of How to Change Your Mind, a pioneering search for consciousness in the brain and beyond
A World Appears is the story of the quest to solve the greatest mystery in nature: consciousness. How does it feel to be you with your own personal feelings, thoughts and experiences? Every one of us is intimately familiar with consciousness, but no one knows how - or why - it came to be that three pounds of grey matter can generate a subjective point of view.
I'm passionate about what happens at the seam where creativity meets intelligent machines. My work moves between art, design, and AI, and these books sit on that exact edge. The questions they raise, about consciousness, imagination, alignment, and the honest reckoning with what we build, aren't abstract to me. They're the terrain I work in every day, in the studio and in the workshops I teach.
As someone who moves between art and analysis, I know how rarely people speak honestly about failure.
Lynton and Steiner do it with grace and zero performance, which is almost unheard of in this genre. I love the restraint of their writing, the way they refuse the easy arc of redemption. I love how they frame mistakes as material rather than wounds, as something to build from.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A powerful examination of the nature of mistakes, why we make them, the hidden ways they can haunt us, and how surfacing and reckoning with them can help us lead to fuller, more satisfying lives by two powerhouse authors with high-profile, executive experience and vast networks, who made public, life-altering mistakes.
While very few people start enormous companies or discover lifesaving medical cures, we all make mistakes. Yet there are lots of books about successful entrepreneurs, massive failures, and compelling scientific discoveries, and no book that helps us understand how our personalities drive mistakes and how mistakes…
I came to writing after twenty years of working with dreams, so I already had lots of techniques for coming and going easily between the everyday world and the inner worlds of imagination, and I’m sure that’s why I’ve never suffered from any creative blocks or anxieties. In a career spanning 30 years, I have written about 150 books, both fiction and non-fiction, for children and adults, and scores of articles including a monthly column in Writing Magazine. I have taught creative workshops for major writing organisations such as The Society of Authors, The Arvon Foundation, and The Scattered Authors’ Society, and I offer a varied programme of courses independently throughout the year.
This book, like the previous one, is written by an anthropologist, and it describes the author’s experiences of learning dreaming techniques from a Toltec sorcerer. In that tradition, there are seven Gates of Dreaming, obstacles to be overcome if you want to achieve greater dream awareness and control, and the book looks at four of them. It’s thought-provoking but easy reading because it takes the form of a story, rather than a series of essays, and I enjoyed trying some of the ideas in my own dream practice.
Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…
I grew up in a family of beautiful, accomplished women at a time when most women stayed home. But the spectacular women in my mother's family also suffered spectacularly, and I was determined to understand family life at its very roots. I studied anthropology and, over a 15-year period, lived in a remote part of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea among a group of Gimi women who spent most of their time apart from men. I shared women's difficult daily lives, participated in their separate rites, learned their myths, and, through my writing, have devoted myself to giving them voices of their own.
A classic of ethnographic description and symbolic analysis based upon fieldwork among the Ndembu of Zambia—a must read for anyone interested in sociological and psychological implications of ritual belief and practice in a small-scale, non-literate, kinship-based society.
A stellar example of what is lost by cancelling "colonialist" literature and discarding the very concepts of "culture" and "religion" as relics of Western intellectual imperialism.
In 10 essays on color symbolism, circumcision rites, rites of passage, social dynamics, and more, Turner lays the groundwork for his proposition that ritual is the key to religion and religion is the key to culture.
A pioneering work of high quality, this collection of anthropological studies provides one of the most detailed records available for an African society-or indeed for any group-of the semantics of ritual symbolism. It combines unusually detailed ethnographic description, based upon field work among the Ndembu of Zambia, with remarkable theoretical sophistication. Professor Turner describes the ritual phenomena in terms both of practice and of their sociological and psychological implications within a preliterate society.
Case histories illustrate the function of ritual in creating community harmony. Data on circumcision rites and medical practices and an essay on color classification have wide implications…
